Now I was mostly idly musing as is my wont [though I did get two offers from dear colleagues!], but I started adding things to a spreadsheet anyway, to see what I could see.

There may be more posts in the future emanating from this poking around, but here’s the first.

You know, and I know, that neither gender nor sex are binaries. LCSH isn’t quite there yet, so for the purposes of these analyses — I will be treating men and women as though they were opposite sides of a binary.

As I gathered more and more terms that are gender divided, I realized that the best place to start might be analyzing and comparing the narrower terms of two fairly high terms — Women and Men.

You may’ve noticed that all the examples link a term to a BT and none link a term to an NT. That’s because in MARC records, there are no NTs. In proposing and maintaining LCSH records — only BT relationships are recorded. The system automatically generates the corresponding NT. That isn’t going to come up or anything, I just think it’s interesting to know.

Two other pertinent points from the memo:

[ . . . ] and [ . . . ] headings:

Make a BT from the heading (or its equivalent) that follows the word and (cf. H 310).

Prepositional phrases:

Make a BT from the heading that corresponds to the term(s) following the preposition.

Examples:

Sex instruction for [group of people]

BT [group of people]

Church work with [group of people]

BT [group of people]

The […] and […] headings will be particularly important later. Remember the rule that a BT is made only for the term which follows the ‘and’.

Now that we’ve covered some of the rules of forming BT relationships — let’s see what terms LCSH has deemed Men and Women to be BTs of.

[You don’t have to read all these now!! This is just so you can consult the full list if you want, later, I’m going to break it down in a bit]

Men (May Subd Geog)
Here are entered works on the human male. Works on male organisms in general are entered under Males.
UF Human males
BT Human beings
Males
RT Effeminacy
Masculinity
SA headings beginning with the word Male, e.g. Male nurses
NT Abused men
Abusive men
Antique collecting for men
Bahai men
Bisexual men
Brotherhoods
Brothers
Christian men
Church group work with men
Church work with men
Cosmetics for men
Dandies
Eunuchs
Fathers
Gay men
Gifted men
Grooming for men
Heterosexual men
HIV-positive men
Homeless men
Househusbands
Husbands
Indian men
Indigenous men
Jewish men
Latin lovers
Male prostitutes
Married men
Men in black (UFO phenomenon)
Middle-aged men
Middle class men
Motion pictures and men
Motion pictures for men
Muslim men
Nephews
Older men
Overweight men
Photography of men
Poor men
Preaching to men
Rural men
Sex instruction for men
Sexual harassment of men
Sexual minority men
Short men
Single men
Social work with men
Sons
Sperm donors
Strong men
Uncircumcised men
Uncles
Upper class men
Urban men
Violence in men
Widowers
Wild men
Womanizers
Working class men
Young men

That’s a lot of terms and I don’t expect you to read ’em all, but I wanted to make sure you had them for your own analysis [knowing not everyone has access to ClassWeb, the most up-to-date place for LCSH].

Next, I wanted to whittle down these lists to make them a little more manageable. I matched identical terms and equivalent familial relationships. I also mapped Short men to Tall women as being kin, though I am willing to entertain that there should be headings for Tall men and Short women [neither exist at press time]. Femme fatales being matched to Womanizers is admittedly, not the best match, but they’re close enough to me that I still felt justified.

The following are the matched headings.

Men
Abused men
Abusive men
Uncles
Bahai men
Bisexual men
Christian men
Church grp work w/ men
Church work with men
Sons
Womanizers
Gifted men
Heterosexual men
HIV-positive men
Homeless men
Househusbands
Husbands
Indian men
Indigenous men
Jewish men
Gay men
Married men
Middle-aged men
Middle class men
Fathers
Motion pictures and men
Motion pictures for men
Muslim men
Nephews
Older men
Overweight men
Sperm donors
Photography of men
Poor men
Preaching to men
Rural men
Sex instruction for men
Sexual harassment of men
Sexual minority men
Single men
Brothers
Social work with men
Short men
Upper class men
Urban men
Violence in men
Widowers
Wild men
Working class men
Young men